10 years ago today, my life changed forever, because 10 years ago today, during the 4th quarter of a local high school football game, my mother looked at my father and told him she was sorry just moments before a brain aneurism left her speechless and hospitalized. 3 days later, she was dead.

That one moment set in motion a chain of events that are still hard to wrap my mind around, which is one reason why the year from hell that followed isn’t in book form…yet.  Suffice it here to say that 20 days after my mom passed, my brother had, as well, and my world was upside-down.

And that was only the beginning.

This was a moment that impacted every moment I have lived since.  It changed how I see people, how I teach people, how I love and lead people.  It changed the filter of my worldview from “Christian” and “Non-Christian” to “hurting” and “not hurting yet.”  It changed how I prioritize, it changed how I pastor, it changed how I preach.

That day changed everything in ways that I still do not even comprehend one decade later.

I’m not looking to write something brilliant in one post about something that was so life-altering, but I wouldn’t mind leaving you with this one thought, which could quite possibly become the opening paragraph in the book that will be written about the time that I met Jesus on the worst day of my life.  I’d love your reactions to it.

There are moments that change us.  They change us because they stop us, even if it is only long enough for us to think, to hurt, to cry.  They can’t be stopped, or in most cases, even controlled.  They come and go as they please, and leave us stuck in places we would have never believed…wondering if we will ever move, laugh, or dance again?  They seem like periods, but they are more like commas, something that my 8th-grade English teacher said I didn’t understand.  But I understand them better now, because one day I stared into the eyes of my brother as he died.

From time to time over the next month or so, I’ll post more thoughts, memories, and ramblings that have come over the years.  For now, let me simply tell you one of the important things that I learned in the middle of that time: Jesus doesn’t run from pain, or from those who are in it.

He runs to the pain and carries us through it.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve hated yard work.  I’ve secretly fantasized about sneaking out in the middle of the night and painting my entire landscape so that it would look good without needing any upkeep.  Yes, I know this is unrealistic, and so I’m caught somewhere between having a great yard that requires work and living in an apartment with flowers around the front sign that someone else takes care of.  Until very recently, I’ve been the guy on the riding mower constantly being chased by a cloud of dust.

If you read The Blog Channel with any regularity, then you know that a couple of months ago we took some pretty extreme measures to fix our yard (check out some pics if you’d like), which has resulted in a yard with a bit more grass and a lot less of the things that I hate the most about yard work: weeds and sticks.

If there was one thing that could ruin a perfect Saturday growing up, it was these five words from my dad at breakfast: “Today, we’re picking up sticks.”  That short sentence always felt like a lifetime sentence in yard work hell.  Growing up on 17 acres of land with about 2 of them covered in grass under large trees meant that there never seemed to be an end to sticks and weeds and rocks to be cleared out of the way so that my dad could come behind us on the mower.

Stick and stones may break your bones, but they can definitely break the will of a teenager on a Saturday morning.

Fast forward to life as I know it today, and now I’m the dad saying the same thing to my kids, except I don’t say it as often, because I’m not the dad who has a lot of yard maintenance motivation.  I’ve seen those guys, and I think I’ve even had conversations with those guys, but I am not one of those guys, and I think it’s because – deep down – I’ve always felt like the battle with lawn trash like weeds and sticks was unwinnable.  Limbs fall down and weeds grow up, and they both have to go if you have any hope of an attractive yard.

“Green and clean” is a phrase that gets a lot of mileage about yards, and I even read one guy who said if he couldn’t have green, he could at least always have clean.  My dilemma? If the sticks match the color of the dirt because there’s no green, what’s the point of picking them up?  And if the only thing you can grow that’s green is weeds, why pull ’em?

In case I’ve lost you, let me sum up before we move on: while it is possible to be clean without green, the truth is that a yard without growth is demoralizing, and at some point the reality is that we’ll just end up letting it go.  That’s the cold truth about our humanity, and unfortunately, that truth carries over into our spiritual lives, too.

It’s easy to become discouraged about the fight we wage against sin in our culture and ourselves.  We do have days when it feels like we’re winning, but many days we feel more like Paul did when he wrote these words:

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do…For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.  For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. (Romans 7:15, 18-19)

Sounds like that unwinnable weed war, doesn’t it?  Paul sounds about as hopeless against his struggle with sin as I did in my argument to my dad growing up that Saturdays were for sleeping, and I can assure you that I’ve muttered things like this under my breath as I tried to turn a dirty yard into a clean one. “I want to pull these weeds.  I want to pick up these sticks.  But I know they’ll just be back tomorrow and there’s too many to get them all.  It’s too far gone. I want a clean yard, but I’m powerless against the onslaught of yard trash!!  I give up!”

Paul said it a little differently, but his response to the overwhelming reality of the sin – the sticks and weeds – in his heart was the same: “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24)

Thankfully, there is hope in this war against sticks, stones, weeds, and sin.  Actually, there’s a lot more than hope.  There’s victory, and it all comes from a hopeless life living surrendered to the ultimate Gardener.  We have a rescuer, and His name is Jesus.  Paul, overcome with the joy of knowing he wasn’t left to a heart full of multiplying sin, penned the equivalent of the first words spoken at the press conference of a liberated POW: “Thanks be to God – through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:25)

Now, it’d be great to end it right there, wouldn’t it?  Sin is defeated, the sticks and rocks are removed and covered up with fresh topsoil, and Roundup has made sure that the weeds that were there aren’t any longer.  But the truth is that the war still rages.  We still have sin that creeps up in our lives, just like my brand new yard still collects sticks and weeds.  But just like I’m no longer trying to make a dirty yard clean, we’re no longer trying to make a sinful heart good.

I don’t have the same yard I once had.  I (along with help from good friends) removed the old one and put down a new one.  New soil, new seed, new bushes, new pine needles.  And here’s the best lesson I’ve learned: it’s a whole lot easier to keep a clean yard clean than it was to keep a dirty yard clean.  Because my yard is no longer overgrown with weeds and covered with limbs and sticks, I can spot a new weed or a fallen limb from clear across the lawn.  I still pull weeds – it seems daily, too – but it’s just one or two at a time instead of feeling like I need to run Roundup through my sprinkler!

In our spiritual lives, the principle is the same.  We’re not trying to scrub a dirty heart clean.  Religion tries – and fails – to do that.  Instead, Jesus has given each of us a new heart, a new life, and new strength, and now we simply do the upkeep.

Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. (Proverbs 4:23)

How do you guard your heart?  The same way I guard my yard against the inevitable weeds: daily. Spend consistent time in prayer and reading the Scriptures each day, and you’ll be amazed how much easier it will be to spot the sin in your life that doesn’t belong.  It will literally stick out like a sore thumb.

Or, at least like an unwanted weed.

Here are some images we shot over the past week while we totally redid our front yard.  We’ll add some more when the grass really starts to grow and we get the bushes and flowers planted. Should be finished in the next couple of weeks, but the difference is amazing already.  Couldn’t have done it without the help of our good friend, Nehemiah Parah (he’s the guy on the tractor)!